Baltimore launches Trusted Business apps

It's all in the packaging

In a bid to revive its flagging fortunes, internet security software vendor Baltimore Technologies Plc has launched a new suite of pre-packaged software modules designed to offer secure solutions for networking, messaging and electronic document management.

The Dublin, Ireland-based company has been through some tough times this year, with a voluntary de-listing from the Nasdaq stock exchange, and the sale of its cryptographic hardware and email filtering software businesses and Australian subsidiary, but will be looking to improve its finances with the new packaged application strategy.

Known as the Trusted Business Suite, the application modules portfolio includes a set of business modules built on top of the core Baltimore Applied Solutions Engine (BASE) platform, which includes Baltimore's own authentication and authorization technologies. Designed to be deployed out of the box, the Trusted Business Suite comprises six application modules.

In the networking field, Trusted VPN is a secure virtual private networking application that uses digital certificates and features user enrolment and management functionality, while Trusted Web includes access and authorization management capabilities.

For secure messaging, Baltimore is introducing Trusted E-mail, a package that enables administrators to assign digital certificates to email users and digitally sign and encrypt emails, as well as Trusted Web-mail, which extends access to email messaging to extranets and portals.

In the electronic document management space, known by Baltimore as Trusted Workplace, the company has introduced Trusted Documents, which provides secure digital signing and encryption for electronic documents, as well as Trusted Forms, which applies digital signatures and certificates to form-based web transactions.

The company believes that by prepackaging its encryption and digital security technologies with business applications, it will be better positioned to target the corporate market. It will need to be. Despite increased interest in network and data security in the last year, Baltimore has been struggling. Its most recent financial results showed revenue down 43% at 22.1m pounds ($34.3m) in the first half of 2002, ended June 30, compared to 38.9m pounds ($60.5m) in the first half of 2001.

The company's restructuring program has seen it sell its Content Technologies subsidiary to content filtering specialist Clearswift Corp for 20.5m pounds ($30m), as well as the bulk of its majority holding in its Japanese distributor to investment company CGI Ltd for JPY 900m ($6.75m). The company also sold its Australian subsidiary to local security company SecureNet Ltd for 2.1m pounds ($3m) cash, and its cryptographic hardware business to AEP Systems Ltd for 3m pounds ($4.66m) cash.